1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a simulator, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for simulating a video disc player during the development of the video disc player.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As watching VCDs and DVDs becomes popular home entertainment, numerous brands of video disc players emerge on the market. Manufacturers of video disc players find that the life cycle of a product is getting shorter and shorter due to the advance of technology. The earlier a product enters the market, the more profits and market share its manufacturer is likely to gain. To survive the fierce competition, manufacturers need not only to improve the speed, function, and usability of their products to meet the volatile demands from the market, but to develop new products at lower cost and within shorter time to increase profit margins and to enter the market as soon as possible. To achieve this end, it is necessary to examine the process of developing a video disc player to seek a solution.
A video disc player consists of hardware and embedded firmware. Conventionally a hardware platform is necessary to test whether the firmware can operate correctly with the hardware. Consequently the firmware cannot be tested and modified before the hardware is available in the process of developing a video disc player. Therefore the completion of the hardware of a video disc player becomes the bottleneck in the process of product development.
Scrutinizing the operation of a video disc player, the conventional method of playing a video disc comprises the steps of using a video disc player with embedded firmware to decompress the compressed data stored on the video disc, to transform the decompressed data into audio-video output signals, and to transmit the output signals to an output device to play the content of the video disc. The flow of the conventional method can be illustrated with FIG. 1.:                Step 100: start;        Step 110: loading a set of compressed audio-video data from a device for storing compressed data;        Step 120: the firmware driving the video disc player to decompress the set of compressed audio-video data;        Step 130: the firmware driving the video disc player to decode the set of audio-video data;        Step 140: the video disc player outputting the set of audio-video data to an output device to play the content of the video disc;        Step 150: end.        
FIG. 1 shows the role firmware plays in driving the hardware of a video disc player to play a video disc. The firmware drives the hardware of the video disc player to decompress the compressed audio-video data stored on a video disc, to decode the decompressed audio-video data into output signals, and then to transmit the output signals to a display device to play the content of the video disc. Only after being loaded with the firmware can the hardware of a video disc player function and operate correctly. Although the hardware and the firmware of a video disc player can be developed separately, the firmware must be tested on the hardware according to the prior art. As a result the completion of the hardware becomes the bottleneck of the process of developing a video disc player.